.Type
of Work and Publication Dates........The
Red
Badge of Courage is a short novel with elements of the bildungsroman.
The book focuses on the character development of a young soldier after
he enlists in the Union Army in 1863, during the American Civil War. The
novel presents a realistic portrait of the youth and the battle he fights
with the enemy and with himself. The Irving Bacheller newspaper syndicate
published the novel in abridged form in 1894 in The Philadelphia Press
and other newspapers. The New York City firm of D. Appleton & Company
published the work in book October 1895.

Setting........The
action takes place in the spring of 1863 in the northern Virginia countryside
near the Rappahannock River. Historically, that locale is where Union forces
under General Joseph Hooker fought Confederate forces under General Robert
E. Lee in the Battle of Chancellorsville. Author Crane never mentions Hooker,
Lee, Chancellorsville, or even the U.S. Civil War. But it is clear from
his descriptions—and from a specific mention of the Rappahannock River—that
he is writing about the Battle of Chancellorsville.

Characters

Henry Fleming: New
York state farm boy who enlists in the Union Army in the belief that war
is a glorious adventure. His first taste of military living, with its constant
drills and the monotony of camp life, disillusions him. Moreover, the prospect
of actually being shot at, and possibly dying, unnerves him. Consequently,
he runs away during his first encounter with the enemy. Later, a fleeing
Union soldier holding his rifle high accidentally runs into Henry. The
rifle opens a gash in Henry’s head. With his “red badge of courage”—the
head injury—Henry has a war wound to show his comrades and becomes a changed
young man. The Tall Man (Jim
Conklin): Soldier who befriends Fleming. Conklin suffers fatal wounds during
the battle that Henry ran from and thus pricks Henry’s conscience. The Loud Man (Wilson):
Braggart who is really cowered by the prospect of war. After his first
battle, he transforms into a different man: quiet, kind, brave. He becomes
Henry Fleming's fiend and captures the enemy flag while Henry fights at
his side.The Tattered Man:
Soldier who mistakes young Fleming for a wounded soldier and dogs Fleming
with questions about the location of his wound. The Lieutenant: Officer
who harasses Henry at first, even beating him with a sword, in order to
turn him into a soldier. Later, he praises Henry for his battlefield exploits. The Colonel: Commanding
officer of Henry’s regiment.The General: Officer
who upbraids Henry's regiment for stopping short of victory during a battle.Henry's Mother: She
opposes Henry's enlistment but accepts his decision to volunteer. Before
he leaves home, she advises him on what to do if he has a notion to run
from the enemy.Cursing Comrade:
Man whom Henry Fleming helps to dress a shin wound.Bill Smithers: Union
soldier whose hands was stepped on.Taylor: A Union brigade
leader.Tomkins: Youth who
acts as a messenger from the Union general.Jones: Another messenger
for the Union general.Johnson: Union private
who helps carry a wounded officer.Tom Jamison: Friend
of the tattered man.Cheerful Soldier:
Soldier who befriends Fleming.Jack: Sergeant and
friend of the cheerful soldier. Jack suffers a fatal bullet wound when
he turns to answer a question.Corporal Simpson:
Officer who helps Henry Fleming and examines the latter's head gash, believing
the youth suffered the wound during battle. Charley Morgan: Union
soldier who gets into a fight with one of Fleming's friends.Jimmie Rogers: Union
soldier who threatens the same friend of Fleming.Sarcastic Soldier:
Union soldier who accuses Fleming of bragging about his fighting. Fleming
denies that he was doing so.Various Other Officers,
Foot Soldiers, Orderlies, Couriers

Nameless
Soldiers

.......Crane
frequently depicts combatants in an army as a synergistic whole—a single
lump of humanity—rather than as individuals with names and personalities.
Consequently, he often presents charging soldiers as a single entity, such
as a monster. When he does focus on one soldier, he often abstracts him
into an impressionistic image. Thus, Jim Conklin becomes the “tall soldier;
Wilson, the “loud soldier”; and Fleming “the youth.” There are countless
nameless men, including “the lieutenant,” “the colonel,” and “the tattered
soldier,” each part of the Union army’s anatomy rather than separate beings
with separate personalities.

.......In
the spring of 1863 during the American Civil War, Union recruits encamped
in Virginia undergo rigorous training in preparation for battle. Among
the recruits is Henry Fleming, a New York farm boy who enlisted to reap
his share of glory. Before signing up, he had fantasized about placing
himself in the front lines of great battles. Oh, the wonder of it all!
To defy bullets and to fight in the smoke of artillery fire—was there anything
more exciting? True, the character of the war between the states might
not quite measure up to the heroic and romantic character of the wars of
ancient Greece, which Henry had read about and reveled over. Nevertheless,
what the youth knew about the conflict between the Blue and the Gray had
thrilled him, and he resolved to be a part of it........His
mother had opposed his enlistment. But when it was time for him to leave,
she bade him farewell with this advice: “If so be a time comes when yeh
have to be kilt or do a mean thing, why, Henry, don't think of anything
'cept what's right, because there's many a woman has to bear up 'ginst
sech things these times, and the Lord 'll take keer of us all.”.......What
is right, of course, is to stand and fight, come what may. But once in
the Union camp, he worries that in the face of enemy fire he might run
and, in so doing, disgrace himself. This thought gnaws at him all through
his months of training, during which the tedium of drilling
and listless waiting dulls his appetite for war. After rumors spread that
his regiment will soon engage the Confederates, he asks two men he befriends,
a tall man named Jim Conklin and a loud man named Wilson, how they think
the regiment will do. Conklin, while admitting that the troops are fresh
and raw, says they will probably do just fine—“better than some, worse
than others.” Asked by Henry whether he would ever consider running, Conklin
says he probably would if everyone else ran. But then again, if everyone
stood his ground, he would too. However, Wilson says he would not run under
any circumstances. “The man that bets on my running will lose his money,
that’s all,” he declares. .......After
the soldiers finally break camp, they march off toward the war zone at
Chancellorsville, Virginia. It is a long, grueling march. One morning,
after crossing a river the previous evening, Henry awakens abruptly when
the tall soldier kicks him in the leg. Something is going on, and in moments
Henry—along with the whole regiment—is running down a road. If he is headed
into battle, he could not retreat even if he wanted to, for he is hemmed
in by his fellow soldiers. If he stops, he will be trampled. The men slide
down a bank, cross a stream, and climb a hill. On the other side, artillery
booms, and Henry sees soldiers skirmishing. Farther along, the regiment—moving
more slowly now—files by a dead soldier. The narrator describes the scene
this way:

.......He
lay upon his back staring at the sky. He was dressed in an awkward suit
of yellowish brown. The youth could see that the soles of his shoes had
been warn to the thinness of writing paper, and from a great rent in one
the dead foot projected piteously. And it was as if fate had betrayed the
soldier. In death it exposed to his enemies that poverty which in life
he had perhaps concealed from his friends.

.......These
experiences—the headlong run, the sight of the distant fighting, and the
dead soldier—unnerve Henry. When the youth mopes along, glancing at the
sky, a young lieutenant raps him with his sword, ordering him to speed
up: “No skulking ‘ll do here,” he says........The
men shift about, digging in at one location only to be told to move on
to another, then another. When they finally meet the enemy, a brigade ahead
of them takes heavy fire, and Henry looks on in wonderment, his eyes wide
open and roving, his mouth partly open. The loud man, Wilson, lays a hand
on his shoulder and says, “It’s my first battle, old boy. . . . Something
tells me—".......Henry
is surprised as Wilson tells him that “I’m a gone coon this first time.
. . .” He hands Henry a yellow envelope containing a packet of letters. .......Artillery
fire rings down, bullets whistle by, and the Union forces in front of Henry
are put to rout. But Henry and his regiment hold fast—save for one soldier
who runs away screaming. The lieutenant of the company seizes him by the
collar and forces him back to the front lines. Here and there, men drop.
The dead lie in contorted positions, as if dropped randomly from the sky.
A man whose knee had been split by a bullet clings to a tree. Other wounded
are hustled to the rear. The company’s captain is killed. But Henry survives.
When the Confederates draw back to the cover of woods, he looks at the
blue sky and the sun, surprised that “Nature had gone tranquilly on with
her golden process in the midst of such devilment.”.......“Gee,
ain’t it hot, hey?” he says cheerfully to another soldier, relieved that
the encounter is over. “You bet!” the soldier says. The latter expresses
the hope that “we don’t have no more fightin’ till a week from Monday.”.......But
just then masses of Confederates charge back out of the woods. Shells explode
around Henry like “strange war flowers bursting into fierce bloom.” The
sight frightens the men. Someone says, “We ain’t never goin’ to stand this
second banging. I didn’t come here to fight the hull damn’ rebel army.”.......Rifles
crack from one end of the Union line to the other. Henry trembles. His
knees go weak. In the face of the onslaught, he thinks the enemy is invincible—a
great, rolling, unstoppable machine. One man near Henry runs. So does another.
Then another and another. Henry runs, too, leaving behind his rifle.
So fast does he run that his coat inflates with wind........After
a time, he sees a squirrel that runs from him, just as he had run from
the rebels, and reasons that it is natural to run. By and by, he hears
people talking off yonder, one of them saying that the Union forces prevailed.
Henry is downhearted, full of regret. Why did he have to run?.......Later,
he encounters wounded soldiers—none of whom he recognizes—wending their
way slowly down a road. Henry tags along with them. He envies these soldiers,
for their wounds are outward signs of their battlefield courage. A "tattered
man" asks Henry to point out his wound. Embarrassed, Henry walks off to
another part of the bloody parade and comes across a wretch of a soldier
half-dead with his wounds. It is Jim Conklin, the tall soldier from Henry’s
regiment. Henry tries to help him. Meanwhile, the tattered soldier comes
by, and he too offers to assist. But Conklin wanders off and later, in
the presence of Henry and the tattered soldier, dies. When the tattered
soldier again asks Henry where he was wounded, Henry abandons him. .......During
his wandering, he comes upon horses, wagons, and a column of soldiers heading
into a grove. If they are retreating, he thinks, all could go well for
him. After all, no one could fault him for doing what so many Union forces
are doing. Suddenly, however, the soldiers begin to run toward him, away
from the grove. When Henry tries to stop one of them to ask what is happening,
the soldier’s rifle accidentally strikes Henry in the head, opening a gash.
Dazed, he continues to wander until a sympathetic soldier leads him back
to his regiment. No one reproaches him. In fact, the loud soldier, Wilson,
and another comrade dress his “wound,” which Henry leads them to believe
he suffered in combat. .......The
packet of letters—he still has Wilson’s packet of letters. If Wilson starts
questioning him about his absence from the regiment, Henry can use the
letters to threaten to reveal Wilson as a weakling who lost his head before
the first battle. However, neither Wilson nor anyone else says a word about
Henry’s disappearance. What is more, Wilson—once a loud braggart—is now
a quiet man who treats Henry with kindness. If anyone is talkative, it
is Henry. Emboldened by his bandaged wound—his “red badge of courage”—he
no longer worries about being accused of deserting the field. When Wilson
asks Henry for the packet, the youth readily returns it........In
the following days, Henry and Wilson fight with valor during a rebel attack.
After the regiment’s color bearer suffers a wound, Henry takes the flag
from him and helps lead a forward charge. The other men also fight bravely
even though some officers predicted that the regiment would falter, saying
it consisted of mere “mule drivers.” The narrator says:.......“[The]
emaciated regiment bustled forth with undiminished fierceness when its
time came. When assaulted again by bullets, the men burst out in a barbaric
cry of rage and pain. They bent their heads in aims of intent hatred behind
the projected hammers of their guns. Their ramrods clanged loud with fury
as their eager arms pounded the cartridges into the rifle barrels.”.......However,
the men unwittingly stop a hundred feet short of victory, a general says;
they should have kept moving forward. But in the case of Henry and Wilson,
this disconcerting news is tempered with heartening news: The regiment’s
commanding officers observe that the two men are the company’s best fighters. .......Later,
when the fighting resumes, the regiment this time charges the rebels, chasing
them beyond a fence and capturing their flag. Henry’s regiment has prevailed;
the men have proven themselves worthy to wear Union blue........Henry
is now a veteran. But he is also a changed young man. Although he regrets
earlier fleeing the battle in a moment of crisis, he puts that act behind
him, as well as his previous conceptions of war as a glorious adventure.
The narrator says, “He felt a
quiet manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that
he would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point. He
had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but
the great death. He was a man.”.......The
soldiers march off in heavy rain through thick mud, but Henry was happy.
For “he had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare
was in the past.”.......(Editor’s
note: Although the fictional Union regiment defeated its foes—perhaps as
a real-life Union regiment might have dominated fighting on the Chancellorsville
battlefield on a single day—the overall battle itself was won by the Confederates
under General Robert E. Lee, enabling him and his forces to march north
and into Pennsylvania, where they fought and lost to Union forces at Gettysburg
on July 1-3, 1863.)...

Climax........The
climax of a play or another narrative work, such as a short story or a
novel, can be defined as (1) the turning point at which the conflict begins
to resolve itself for better or worse, or as (2) the final and most exciting
event in a series of events. According to the first definition, the climax
of The Red Badge of Courage occurs when a fleeing Union soldiers
accidentally strikes Henry Fleming in the head with his rifle, inflicting
a gash that Henry allows his regimental companions to believe is a war
wound. According to the second definition, the climax occurs when Henry’s
regiment chases the enemy off the field and captures their flag.

.

.Themes.Maturation

.......The
novel centers on the maturation of a naive youth who matures into a young
adult in the crucible of war. Maturation is a frequently occurring literary
motif in which authors expose an innocent or inexperienced character to
harsh or jaded reality. This reality may appear on a battlefield, in a
home, in a school, on a ship, in a slum, on an island, in a prison, and
so on.

Facing Fears

.......Henry
Fleming, a callow Civil War volunteer, runs from the battlefield rather
than risk his life. He discovers, however, that he cannot escape from his
anxieties. Wherever he goes, he worries that someone will finger him as
a coward. Later, he redeems himself by facing his fears.

Brutality of War

.......War
is not glorious, as Fleming believed before he enlisted. Instead, it is
brutal and merciless, like a crazed monster, killing and maiming at random.

Indifference of Nature

.......In
The Red Badge of Courage, nature—the sun, the moon, the stars, the
entire universe—carries on with its business regardless of what happens
to man. Like a great unfeeling machine, it functions in its usual way without
heed to humans in peril. Man cannot manipulate it; he cannot control it
in any way. Man’s impotence against nature makes it seem to him as if he
also has no control over his own destiny.

Naturalism
and Fate

.......The
idea that a human being is at the mercy of fate or a pitiless universe
had fascinated writers of Crane's time, in particular the French novelists
Émile Zola (1840-1902) and Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907), as well
as the German playwright, poet, and novelist Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946).
They pioneered a literary movement known as naturalism. However, although
these naturalists often receive credit for originating as a literary motif
the concept of a cruel universe that determines man’s fate, writers centuries
before had explored the idea. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Job suffers
numerous reverses—including the loss of his material possessions, his sons,
and his health—even though he is a righteous man. In Greek tragedy—in particular
in the plays of Sophocles, such as Oedipus
Rex—fate plays an extremely important role as an inexorable
force. William Shakespeare explored this idea in the early 1600's with
unsurpassed insight in his play King
Lear, in which Gloucester says in Act IV, Scene I, "As flies to
wanton boys, are we to the gods. / They kill us for their sport" (Lines
38-39). Many other writers before and after Crane also focused on naturalist
themes. Among American writers who did so, besides Crane, were Frank Norris,
Hamlin Garland, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and James T. Farrell..

Impressionistic
Format........Author
Crane tells the story in third-person point of view, presenting the impressions
of a young Union volunteer during his preparation for war and during his
first experiences in combat. The dialogue is written in the homely vernacular
of common folk. Rather than focusing
on the objective reality of the Union and Confederate clash in the Battle
of Chancellorsville, Crane dwells on the subjective reality of a young
soldier’s reactions to the scenes around him. Through the soldier’s eyes,
Crane sees and paints a word picture of war; it is an interpretation rather
than a historical account, an impressionistic portrait rather than a photograph.

Critical
Reception........When
the novel appeared in book form, it received high critical acclaim in England
before American critics—taking a cue from their English counterparts—embraced
the book. Among its strong points, critics opined, were its psychological
penetration of the main character and its realistic portrayal of war. .

.Stylistic
Flaw: Overblown and Vague Descriptions........Although
Crane’s descriptions of soldiers and the battles they fight contain realistic
detail, too often he lards these descriptions with unnecessary, inappropriate,
imprecise, or prosaic language. In Chapter 19, for example, Crane tells
us that a friend of Henry Fleming was “lurching suddenly forward.” There
is no other way to lurch except suddenly. The word is implicit in
the meaning of lurch and therefore unnecessary. Crane has that same
friend fire an ”angry shot” at “persistent woods.” One wonders whether
the man also fires calm shots. And what are persistent woods? .......In
a Crane novel, characters do not merely stare; rather they stare “with
blank and yokel-like eyes.” A regiment does not merely plod onward; instead,
“the regiment, involved like a cart involved in mud and muddle, [moves]
unevenly with many jolts and jerks”—or, on another day, “[goes] painfully
forward.” In The Red Badge, a lieutenant has lips that are “habitually
in a soft and childlike curve” even though lips come in twos and cannot
form a single curve. We are told that the lieutenant does not fear “the
vindictive threats of bullets” (possibly because he, like the reader, has
no idea of what a “vindictive threat” is). That same lieutenant does not
swear; rather, he “bellows profanely” with lips “writhed into unholy contortions.”
In response to the lieutenant’s “blue haze of curses,” Henry Fleming’s
mouth becomes “puckered in doubt and awe.” Why do curses come in hazes—blue
hazes? The lieutenant, Crane says in an attack of as if’s, “grappled
with [Fleming] as if for a wrestling bout. It was as if he
planned to drag the youth by the ear on to the assault” (boldface emphasis
added to the original text). All of these examples of Crane’s writing come
from a seven-paragraph passage in Chapter 19..

Study
Questions and Essay Topics

Before
enlisting, Henry Fleming sees war as a glorious pursuit. After undergoing
training and experiencing combat, he sees war for what it is: brutal, harrowing,
uncivilized. Is there any segment of American society today that still
views war as thrilling, exciting, and glorious? How do most modern American
films and television programs depict war?

What other
events in life—or what activities and careers—are
erroneously depicted as glorious?

Many soldiers
in the Civil War enlisted for reasons other than glory. Write an essay
that identifies these reasons. In your research, consider the issues of
slavery and economic rivalry between the North and the South, as well as
any other issues that your research turns up.

Although
Stephen Crane does not mention a specific Civil War battle as the one in
which Fleming encounters the enemy, the year and the locale suggest that
it is the Battle of Chancellorsville. In an essay compare and contrast
Crane's description of the battle with eyewitness accounts written by soldiers
on both sides, with accounts of newspaper reporters covering the battle,
and with accounts of historians or other researchers who have studied the
battle.

What did
the typical battlefield soldier eat? What kind of treatment did he receive
when he developed a serious illness? Did he receive letters from home?
What did he do during his idle time?